Chapter Fifteen
Be strong,” Genevieve whispered on Thursday morning to the thick white mug containing her harvest spice latte.
She’d just settled upon a tall chair next to her sister at The Grind Coffee Shop. They sat facing a window overlooking Misty River’s historic downtown square.
“Recovery update?” Natasha asked.
“Still clean.”
Natasha pulled Genevieve to her in a congratulatory one-armed hug. Her sister had been monitoring Genevieve’s recovery expertly. Checking on her, encouraging her, providing accountability, listening. But not beating the subject into a pulp.
Natasha had come straight from dropping her kids off at Mother’s Day Out and could only spare thirty minutes for research before she needed to rush off to complete the one thousand things she hoped to squeeze into her kid-free hours.
“I have a gift for you,” Natasha announced.
Let it not be knitted handicrafts.
“Mittens!” Natasha tugged a mass of pink yarn from her purse.
Knitted handicrafts.
“I couldn’t figure out how to knit the thumb,” Natasha said, “but then I thought, why do mittens need thumbs anyway? Why can’t mittens just be like roomy socks for our hands?”
“Right!”
“I really think I might be on to something. I could open an Etsy shop and make a mint. Try them on!”
Bravely, Genevieve donned them. Unlike the hat Natasha had fashioned for her, the mittens were too loose. They gaped around her wrists like an old man’s double chins. “Thank you!”
Natasha snickered. “Without thumbs, they make you look like you have hand wounds. People are going to love them!” Natasha whisked open her laptop as Genevieve stowed the mittens, which did indeed resemble enormous hand bandages, in her purse.
Together they bent over the computer while Natasha, no stranger to the law, looked up Angus Morehouse’s arrest record. Genevieve was, as always, content to let her older sister be good at the things she was good at (knitting, not among those).
The end of Natasha’s blond ponytail feathered against the shoulder of the tight-fitting exercise jacket she’d zipped up to her chin. “Ah. Here we are. I think this is the site that will allow me to access his arrests. If there’s anything to find about you, Angus, we will.” Her fingertips sped over the keys. “Voilà.” Natasha pointed to the screen and read off each charge and the year.
Angus had been charged with misdemeanor battery three times, plus felony battery once. His felony conviction had sent him to jail.
“Angus doesn’t exactly seem like a rosebud of a person,” Genevieve commented.
“No.”
“Is there any way to tell who he fought with on each of these occasions?”
Natasha shook her head. “The site doesn’t give me that much detail.”
“Well, we have reason to believe at least one of these arrests for assault may have been for the fight he had with Russell.”
“If so, it would probably be this one.” Natasha tapped a misdemeanor arrest that had occurred in the early spring of 1983. Russell had died later that summer.
“What if we look up Russell’s arrest record? If both men were arrested for the same fight, we’d be able to cross-check the dates and confirm, yes?”
“Yes.”
While Natasha fed the website new information, Genevieve relished her latte and wondered if work was going smoothly for Sam over at The Kitchen this morning. It wasn’t far from here. Just down a block and around the corner. Was he content? Irritated? Happy? Down?
She wished she knew his state of mind. Unfortunately, she didn’t. It had been a week since their steak dinner. Their first interaction afterward had been at The Junction.
What a debacle that had been. Her, so falsely jolly. Her, so immaturely pleased that other men were hitting on her in front of Sam so that he couldn’t assume that just because he didn’t want to date her, nobody did. Him, saying so little. Him, with seething eyes that spoke a hundred things she couldn’t decipher.
